MURDERED: Alonso de la Colina, former host of “Hechos Guerrero”

Mexican journalist Alonso de la Colina Sordo was killed today (April 15) in the central city of Puebla as he left a bank officials said. Until this past February, De La Colina Sordo was a news presenter for a television newscast in the state of Guerrero, one of the hardest hit regions in Mexico by the violence generated by organized crime groups.

The 50 year old journalist was shot in the chest by the heart as he left the bank in a shopping plaza in the city of Puebla, said sources of the Office of the State Prosecutor. The Director of the Ministerial Police, Juan Luis Galán reported that the journalist “was approached in the parking lot of the shopping plaza by a man who was about 1.80 meters tall and robust”. “He fired twice into the air to scare him and then killed him”.

Personnel of the private security of the shopping plaza attended to the journalist, but they were unable to revive him and he died minutes after the shooting, according to initial investigations. The authorities have not yet established whether the motive for the murder was a robbery or was it some kind of persecution for the journalists’ work.

De La Colina was a news presenter for the television newscast “Hechos Guerrero”, but on February 15 he said his goodbyes live during the broadcast of the program and also announced his intention to pursue new projects. A day later the local TV station closed, it had been under contract for 16 years to the family De La Colina Sordo in Acapulco.

Recently, the local channel has resumed reporting news in Acapulco, one of the main tourist centers of the country. Since 2000, about 80 journalists and photojournalists have been killed in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the exercise of the profession.